Carolina Braunschweig, 28, worked as a reporter covering the venture-capital industry for Thomson Corp. in San Francisco. During that period, she also began contemplating the direction of her career and considering ways to supplement her modest reporter salary.
Ms. Braunschweig launched cmbsweets in June 2004, selling jams over the Internet at cmbsweets.com. Today her product line, which includes strawberry, boysenberry and olallieberry jams and apple-honey butter, is also sold in stores in New York, Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area.